Hello,
I have two controll lines that I want to send signals to in a specific pattern every time it is triggered. Basicly, send a signal to the first line for roughly 4 seconds, turn off, then the 2nd line for 4 seconds, turn off, and finally both lines at once for 4 seconds, and off. Also, inbetween transistions, maybe a pause of 2 secs, but it's not mandatory. What kind of setup would I need to do this? I was thinking something along the lines of a 556, but I'm not sure
Thanks much,
mpuvdd

You could do that very easily and cheaply with a microcontroller like a PICAXE.

Sure, you could use a 556 as a basic timer, but you'd need to drive some kind of logic IC's with it, and your parts count rapidly increases, along with the complexity of your PCB.

Might as well do yourself a huge favor by learning the programming language, and keep your project simple. It sure is a lot easier to re-write a few lines of program code than have to re-design a PCB that didn't quite do what you were planning on.

These can be tuned to your needs. You'd probably want to control a one shot for outputs 1 then that triggers output 2 on the negative pulse the negative pulse on 2 triggers another circuit that pulls 1 and 2 high.

The other option could be a 555 or cmos clock with a period of 2 seconds being triggered "on" and clocking a 4017 with the outputs configured as above with output 0 resetting or disabling the clock.
My preference though, would also have to be a PICAXE.